Poems.

It is the second installment of Gayle taking suggestions!  And folks have mentioned poetry.  I haven't really received any clarification on whether I was supposed to write some poetry, or write about some poetry.  A discussion about poetry will have to be another post, because I just sat my ass down in my desk chair for an hour with some scrap paper and a pencil and wrote two poems.

Which!  Means they are unedited - this is what just came out of my fingers, just now.  Before I ever think of these as finished, if I ever do (and the chances that I will are, like, the same as the likelihood of me finding a fucking unicorn), I will pick at and rewrite and cross out and fuss with them for ages.  But I thought it would be nice to put some (relatively bad!) poetry up here before the drastic alterations, because, I don't know, I think for all writers, the most important part is to keep writing.  The vast majority of what you write will be crap (and by "you" here, I mean "me"), but if you keep going, you'll write something that is not.

They haven't titles; I am just going to put them one after another, but they don't go together.  Also, reading them back to back is . . . weird.  Just a warning. 

I.
I keep your cardigan folded
on the shelf with the others.
You would have kept it just so.
You folded your clothes like they were on display in a catalogue.

I date it from the '60's, slightly scratchy, crocheted;
clearly someone's grandmother's sweater.
It still smells of you.
Or I imagine it still smells of you.
I wear it in the dark sometimes, when I weep,
rocking back and forth, holding myself together.
You would never have worn it to cry.
I can't imagine you letting the torrents take you like that.
I never saw you without poise and grace.

Even that day.
You chose to let the morphine take you instead.
You wiped the tears from my cheeks and told me
even if I wasn't ready,
you had to go.
You called me your baby as I
walked out of the room.

That was the last thing you said to anyone.
The morphine waited patiently.

I remember your voice.
Your breath smelled of milk before you died.
You used to sing me to sleep with Yiddish songs,
and always had breakfast ready
at the exact time I woke up in the morning.

I wish I had your poise, your grace.
I put your cardigan on
and try to pretend I do.



II.
Must somewhere there be mirror images
of us,
born with crisp, sweet apple bites
already in our mouths.

Crickets won't shriek so manically loud.
The susurrus of night is gentler, and
a reflection of me cannot bruise
by your force or fingers.
I shan't squawk like a bestial thing,
a cacophany in a crow's beak,
a nut cracked in half.
We hardly would make shadows on the ground.

There would be no blood to bleed.
My image could walk with you in
our woods, pace the perimeter -
I wouldn't even burn.
You could see the freckles on my shoulders
by the starlight.
My shoulders, my arms, the sway down
of my back,
they wouldn't make you jealous.
They wouldn't make you furious.

The fruit of a decade won't catch in my throat;
A mirror image cannot mold.
And you will let me go.
I could walk away.
The trees will part graciously and
there will be no sweetness commensurate
to make me stay.